Starting Chemo again today after a 3 week break.

Yep, the holidays over. 2nd cycle of chemo starts today. I had a 3 week hiatus because I had 2 collapsed lungs (which was a nightmare) and had to have 2 pleurodesis operations to fix it. It's quite interesting really, they do keyhole surgery with a camera and spray talc (not Imperial Leather I hope) between the lung and the the pleura which irritates the tissue and makes them stick together. Fascinating, but bloody painful. Anyway because I was so weak and feeble after those 2 ops, my onc delayed my 2nd chemo session until I was better. Now I love my oncologist and all of his crew but it was like getting blood from a stone to find out if 3 weeks off from chemo would be detrimental to my overall progress. The answer I kept getting (and I may have missed something because that morphine was great!) was that it's no good having chemo if you're not healthy enough to withstand that battering. Which, I understand. But, does the chemo do any less of a job because in essence I have missed a whole cycle. Maybe my question is pointless because their initial answer makes perfect sense and it's a chicken an egg type thing but, if there is a detrimental effect I wouldn't mind knowing ....anybody? I've already only got a 30% chance of taking to the chemo so some more scary news won't hurt me. Bring on the 18 hours a day of sleep!!!!!! Penicillin Here's a funny anecdote. While in hospital I became neutropenic, that's when the neutophils which are part of your white blood cells dip below acceptable levels. All because of the chemo. So they wanted to put me on intravenous antibiotics for a couple of days. No problem I wasn't going anywhere for a while. "Are you allergic to penicillin?", said the doctor "No", I said. I remember having it as a kid once or twice for tonsillitis or other kid stuff. So they start putting me on this drip and my lovely chemo nurse, Claire, was sitting with me asking me how I was feeling. "Fine", I said, "Although, I can smell this funny burning smell, and ... well..I've got a bit metallic taste in my mouth." Claire looked concerned "Oh, my eyes are watering..........Fucking hell my head is killing me!" Claire disappeared, then suddenly returned with 3 other nurses and 2 doctors. It was like something out of Casualty or ER. Next thing I know my breathing is really laboured, which was a pain because I already had a collapsed lung! They put an oxygen mask on me and started injecting things into my canulla. At this point I was very cool, didn't panic, tried to keep my breathing steady and focused (those meditation sessions paid off) and gradually the initial symptoms went. Then after about 15 minutes my breathing started to return to normal. Anyway, eventually I was fine but, it turned out I had been through full on Anaphalactic shock. Apparently I am allergic to Penicillin. Keep this in mind if the last time you had it was as a kid, you can still be allergic to it later in life. All the best Dave